Monday 4 July 2011

Who needs facts when I've got a strawman?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When I left him, I reasoned thus with myself: I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Socrates, from Plato's Apology, 21d


Pet peeve of the week:  why can't people argue properly?

I tend to get a lot of my news from "The Guardian", a UK broadsheet which still maintains a free web service.  One thing they do, and what many of the leading news sites seem to do these days, is allow comments to be posted at the bottom of most articles, moderated only for profanity/racism etc.  Today I was reading an editorial on the merits of nuclear power as an energy source and decided to browse through the comments, and got so disappointed!  So many criticisms, but almost none are properly thought out or even address the issue at hand.  People seem unable to fight facts with facts - not arguing to seek the truth, but arguing from a fixed position, unwilling to move.  Granted, the internet isn't a great place to look for reasoned debate, but I think this problem permeates all over society.

Anyone who's read any Plato can immediately identify the dialectic method of Socrates - a debate, but a debate in which the participants bring forth facts and opinions in which to 'work together' to reach a conclusion.  Somewhat ironically, Socrates' form of debate generally sees him working with someone much less knowledgeable than himself and therefore always ends up fairly one-sided, but in any case, the idea of debating with facts is a great one, and seems a rational thing to do.  It doesn't mean that there's only one right answer, as that depends on the motivations of the arguees (for example, an atheist dying of a horribly painful disease might come to a different conclusion on assisted suicide than a bible-bashing Christian, just because they don't have a shared starting position of goals and beliefs).

I'll run with the nuclear power thing a bit longer, because it provides a perfect illustration of the dangers of the ignorance of proper debate (or I guess 'dialectic' to give it the proper term).  In the article, the writer sets out his initial position.  He provides facts, and uses those facts to come to conclusions about specific points.  He then summarises these conclusions and forms an opinion - do we invest in nuclear power, or no? 

Responses then vary: 
a) Great article, agree with everything!  
This suggests the writer and reader agree on the facts and the conclusion, and reached the same answer.  Not much of a debate, but nothing wrong with it!
b) Shame on you for selling out to the nuclear industry
Wait, what?  Response makes attack on the credibility of the writer, but fails to point out inaccuracy of argument.  This is great for winning people over to your side in the debate, much easier to slander than to defend yourself from slander.  However, it's not a reasoned debate - the responder fails to put forth any counter arguments or even anything else to discuss.  This attack clearly has no merit, but is very effective at creating seeds of doubt in bystanders of the debate. 
c) Handing over power to the nuclear industries is wrong, we can't trust them!
More insidious than b), this is a strawman - slightly modifying the opponents position in order to attack them.  Supporting using some nuclear power in our energy portfolio isn't the same as letting nuclear companies do as they please, but clearly the idea of a for-profit energy company without limitations or boundaries is something easier to fight against.  If it's done well, even the writer might get distracted about what he was trying to say in the first place, weakening his position.
d) I'm not sure about your figures for the amount of uranium left in the ground, which I think is higher, as seen in article X....
Finally, a reasonable argument, debating the facts from which the writer drew his conclusion.  If the facts are wrong, the conclusion might be wrong.  This is the way debate about important matters should be undertaken!

Just as an aside, my personal position in nuclear power is this - as a physicist partly trained in medical physics, I understand better than most the science behind nuclear reactors, reactor design, and especially the interaction of radiation with the human body and the potential consequences.  One thing I've never looked at in depth is the economics behind nuclear power, especially decommissioning the plants which is apparently very expensive.  Therefore I'm happy with the conclusion that nuclear shouldn't be completely disregarded on radiation safety grounds (amount of deaths associated really does compare well to gas/coal/oil, the fear of radiation is more dangerous than the thing in itself), but I can't really comment on the economics of it.  From the few articles I've read on it which aren't dealing with just the hysterical fear of radiation side of nuclear power, but on it's viability as an energy source, I'm leaning towards being favourable, but would be easily swayed by some compelling facts. Therefore, I can't say I support or am against nuclear power.  I could spend some more time researching it and coming to a reasonable conclusion, but I don't really have the time... therefore I'm sitting on the fence.  And there's really nothing wrong with being on the fence!  It's the place to be, the place where everyone keeps an open, but skeptical, mind.  

Of course, arguing at the pub about who's the better football player, Messi or Ronaldo doesn't require such structured argument, but when we are talking about things of importance, when it comes to voting, it's really important that voters can understand the arguments in the political debates and campaigns, and see the difference between strawmen and reason.  We need to understand that it's okay not to know the answer to everything - there's a reason we have experts!  Sometimes we need to judge our politicians on not who appears to know the answer, but on who will get the right advice and knowledge before they declare the answer.  After all, we can't expect our politicians to be an expert on everything under the sun - they need to know how to take advice and weigh the facts themselves. 

The danger related to poor debating isn't theoretical - the anti-nuclear 'green' lobby in Europe is guilty of massive distortion of facts (for example 100,000s of deaths from Chernobyl - complete bullshit!) and liberal applications of pseudo-science, and they've managed to bring about the shut down by 2022 of nuclear reactors in Germany on health and environmental reasons (ie. even shutting down ones that are still working perfectly, not just declining to commission new ones), then burning more coal to make up the shortfall in energy.  If there was a God out there (and their ain't), he'd be doing an epic face palm.    http://www.google.com/search?q=epic+facepalm

PS. Do you see any strawmen in my arguments above?  Maybe there are some - it's easy to be an accidental hypocrite!  As hard as we try, we're human, not perfectly rational beings...